Stand By Your Van

Review by Lyle Brennan | 19 Aug 2009

A sugar rush of excitement sweeps the room; there’s a gleaming pick-up truck centre-stage, and the last of 12 desperate contestants left touching it will drive it home. It’s theatre, of course, but as the actors scramble through the aisles, something strange happens to the audience. Suddenly they’re mesmerised by the gaudy consumerism of it all, clapping and whooping as if brainwashed by too many evenings spent watching The Generation Game. Despite the host’s denials, this is panto for adults – switch fairytales for game shows and the comparison rings true.

As a reality TV satire, it’s highly observant – writer Anna Reynolds clearly spent many a sunrise nodding off to live Big Brother broadcasts. Cliques, conspiracies and romances emerge within hours, and those tiresome ‘in it to win it’ clichés are everywhere: accurate, then, if not clever. A bloated ensemble cast jostles for attention, leaving characters confined to the one joke for which they were created (ditzy blonde, gormless Welshman, doddery OAP, etc.). The strongest, your host, Phil ‘the Lip’, is Chris Tarrant, Jeremy Kyle and Satan in equal parts, and when he asks which contestant the audience is rooting for, it’s clear nobody’s thought to decide.

Due to a cripplingly restrictive format — one room, 13 characters — the ideas run dry. The solution is uninventive: ditch the flimsiest characters and tack a past onto those who reach the big anticlimax. In essence, it’s a slasher movie in which all the victims are disposable and the action’s confined to a 15-foot radius, but there’s something about its inevitability that keeps you riveted nonetheless.